Yea! Papa came today. He drove here late this afternoon to drve Nana back home. We tried to get Nana to stay longer but she refused saying that she didn't want to wear out her welcome. Oh Please! Anyway we are excited to see Papa and even all of the plants that he also brought with him that Nana promptly put in the garden. What a great pair of parents I have. I'm so very lucky.
We did another working experiment with Beeker today. The last time that Nana came to visit she taught both Max and Beeker to roll over on command. Today we worked with Beeker trying to get him to go through a tunnel. This turned out to be a hoot. First off Beeks gets spooked if anything out of the ordinary happens quickly or if he hasn't experienced it before. Therefore, when I brought out the children's nylon climbing tube he freaked. Nana was not fazed by this. She grabbed a bag full of dog treats including liver treats and off she went to teach Beeks to "tunnel". I remembered that Dr. Grandin wrote about the spook factor of novel events and colors, so I suggested that we pull the sides together so that the tunnel looked like a small hula hoop. The sound and the color(yellow and red)of the tunnel hoop was the greatest stumbling block. I know that for dogs, yellow stands out greatly and the scratchy sound of the nylon was hair raising to Beeks. We fed him treats on top of the hula hoop as it was laying on the ground. Beeks handled this easily. Then with the sides tied together, we tried to entice him to walk through the hoop. Beeks would readily stick his head through the hoop and then when Nana pulled the treat further back he pulled his head back and went around the other way to try to get the treat. Smart dog but not what we wanted. Nana was very patient and we kept encouraging him and praising him to go through. At some point he did go all the way thorough and then kind of looked at us like he wasn't sure that it really happened. Actually I think that he was so intent on getting the treat that his head kept following the treat and he HAD to follow it and his feet just followed his nose. Thinking that it would be easier the second time we were encouraged and hopeful. Wrong. It was like starting from the beginning the second time. I got the feeling that it was even more anxious causing the second time. I tried to put the hoop near Beeks and he backed away, even jumped back. He really got intensely focused on the treat, staring at it but wouldn't go through the hoop, then realizing that he could get to it, go around us to get to it. Then I got a great idea from something that I read about dogs use of modeling from other dogs. Yep I went through the hoop so that he could see how he could do it and how it was done. Mom and I were laughing so hard and the hoop got stuck on my behind that we really lost it. Good thing that I was the one taking the pictures so that we weren't able to document that one. Yep, soon after that Beeks went through the hoop again, body following his nose. Just as intensely as before. I would say that he was able to go through the hoop probably 5 or 6 times but not repeatedly, more intermittently. He really has a difficult time with this concept. I just wanted to get him comfortable with the hoop so I tried to put it near him with me next to him. He was skittish with even being that close to it. I wonder if a hoop or tunnel that was bigger or made out of different fabric or different color would have worked better.
Mom then went over to Max who was laying near by to see what his reaction would be. Max was unfazed by the whole thing. He was too big to go through the hoop but he let Nana put it clear over his head and down his body, with out batting an eye. It's just my skittish dog. I also know that Newfies are a calmer breed and Cattle dogs are higher energy and possibly more anxious so that might be part of it. What ever the reason, I do remember that Beeks will not go through my sister's dog door at all. Beeks has watched her dog Jesse James go in and out of the door but Beeks just sits on the other side and waits until someone opens the door to let him go through. I'm going to keep working with him on this one. I guess I will be buying a hula hoop this weekend as well. I think I will be able to crawl through that.
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